[jghn]

I struggle with this. My reaction to being challenged, even before finding myself in a leadership role, is always the knee jerk that you describe. After some reflection, often quite quickly once I can stop and think about the matter, I revert to your other scenario.

I've been trying to get myself to a place where even if I'm reacting in a knee jerk fashion that at least I'm keeping it to myself but man, it's hard to overcome something that's effectively instinctual.

[grogs]

Sidenote: Mindfulness (AKA vipassana or insight) meditation can give you that gap between feeling something, an emotion in this case, and responding to it. It's potentially useful for a lot of usecases - the NHS have been offering mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for a while now - but what you're talking about sounds very relevant!

[jghn]

Thanks I will look into this

[acrynx]

It might be a sign for you being too ego-centric in general. It could also be completely unrelated, though.

But there definitely seems to be some kind of fear at the root of that.

[jghn]

In my case I believe it's a little bit of both, or one of the two managing to manifest as the other.